Ana Laborde

When Ana Laborde took up the challenge of producing biodegradable plastics whose raw material is not a food source she knew it would be an adventure. For years this idea rolled around in her head, and she watched how other companies were developing technology that allowed creation of compounds from potatoes or corn. However, she wanted to go further, avoiding the use of food.

In her search for new raw materials, this young Mexican with a degree in international trade and several masters behind her hit on the tequila industry, which —in its manufacturing process—wastes a lot of fiber. Laborde believed these could be useful to create bioplastics and, after confirming her suspicions, took the path toward developing a technology that capitalized on the idea.

Three years later, her idea is a reality that has allowed for the founding of BioSolutions, of which she is director. Along with four other researchers, Mexico has managed to produce a bioplastic made of up to 70% waste fiber from agave (the plant from which tequila is produced) and is one hundred percent recyclable.

This compound, in addition to reducing the use of non-renewable resources such as oil, degrades quickly and provides tequila producers a way to dispose of the waste they generate. “By using agave fibers, which are currently dumped in fields, we solve the problem of environmental pollution generated by the tequila industry,” said Laborde. “We take the leftovers and give it a special treatment so it can be incorporated into useful plastics,” said Laborde.

The technology, said the young winner, “can be applied to the plastics industry in any transformation process with most plastic resins.” Furthermore, as it is has been proven in the laboratory and is currently at the pilot plant stage. Laborde is also in the patent application process, both nationally and internationally. “The goal this year is to have our technology produced at the semi-industrial level and to have a commercial demonstration with potential customers,” she said. “Then we will be ready to grow to an industrial stage, with the intention to market the technology worldwide so that many people can benefit from it.”

Although traditional plastic is still present in the BioSolutions compound -at an approximate ratio of 30%, the aim is to obtain a one hundred percent biodegradable plastic which does not contain synthetic materials. “So far we have managed to create a hybrid bioplastic, but I think it is a very good first step as the technology will be developed gradually,” said Laborde.

If Laborde’s future plans with BioSolutions go through, she plans to “to take the company to international scales.” She even plans to try other types of waste to produce bioplastics. But above all, her idea is to keep working in the field of sustainable development. “My greatest satisfaction is knowing I’m doing something to support the planet,” emphasized the researcher.

Indeed, her “social conscience” has attracted the attention of Nico Goulet, managing partner of Adara Venture Partners and member of the TR35 Mexico awards jury. Goulet says Laborde, “has been bold in her innovative approach” and appreciates the risks in starting a company to bring to market its products, which “seem to have a high potential impact.”

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the tenth in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Manuel Wiechers

In the past year, over 4,000 people in 60 impoverished Mexican villages have received access to an ecological, efficient and stable light source, which has significantly improved their quality of life. The energy that powers the LED lamps and small appliances comes from the sun, but also to a large extent, that of Manuel Wiechers, a youthful 25-year-old industrial engineer.

Iluméxico, the company that Wiechers co-founded in 2010 along with electronics engineer Mariana Gonzalez and four other partners, has installed solar equipment in streets, homes and schools in these towns that is specially designed to work in isolated places and to be handled by anyone.

Since college, Wiechers has wanted to transform the living conditions in rural Mexico and believed new technologies and renewable energy would be the best way to achieve it. Along these lines, he founded the Society of Energy and Environment Students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2008 and a year later he wrote his thesis entitled “Renewable Energy for Rural Development.” But the decisive step was the formation of Iluméxico, an organization that in turn is comprised of three other entities engaged in the research and development, production and installation of solar energy equipment systems in the field and user training for those living in rural communities.

While Wiechers works full time in all three parts of Iluméxico, he focuses especially on identifying the best technology to implement through R+D. “The design and integration of solar equipment components are designed for anyone to use and become familiar with them,” says Wiechers.

The system Iluméxico brings to communities, called Prometeo, replaces the candles, kerosene lamps and battery-powered appliances that were used as a light source. Unlike these traditional methods, which are harmful, polluting and expensive, the energy obtained by Prometeo is renewable and —thanks to the innovative built-in charge controller—it always works at maximum efficiency. “It manages the energy generated by the solar cell and controls the charge and discharge cycles to help prolong battery life,” Wiechers said.

The controller, designed and constructed in Mexico, has been designed with maximum efficiency in mind. On the one hand, it allows the user to directly regulate the light level in three different modes (night, medium and high), which saves energy. On the other hand, it uses intelligent algorithms for saving energy. “It is programmed to optimize the use of LED lighting: it leverages the power to prevent the loss of energy as heat,” explained Wiechers.

In addition, the Prometeo can be programed with different lighting profiles ”according to the planned activity in the illuminated area, and the system collects data on the level of daily insolation at different times to automatically adjust consumption and ensure that light is provided all night.”

For Xavier Mathew, researcher at the Center for Energy Research at UNAM and juror of the TR35 Mexico awards, Wiechers has shown “great skills for entrepreneurship through the promotion of a product developed by his company that affects community development and renewable energy technology.” Furthermore, the fact that Iluméxico received funding from public entities such as the National Council of Science and Technology and the Mexican Departments of Energy and Social Development is to Mathew more “evidence of its impact on society.”

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the ninth in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Juan Pablo Esquivel

Autonomous devices that are  capable of analyzing water quality for the presence of foreign substances, microorganisms or cancer markers remains a challenge that would help to pre-empt threats.

If the ability to perform these tests depended on a portable device the size of a chip which integrated all the processes that normally take place in a laboratory, the advantages of rapid and accurate analysis could be brought to areas with resource shortages. One where there is no infrastructure to detect diseases or protect the safety of food and water consumed by the population.

These are also some of the goals of Juan Pablo Esquivel, a young researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM) who has devised an idea to overcome one of the problems of these devices- their limited energy storage capability. He is designing a universal platform that could be incorporated into electrochemical sensors for a myriad of applications.

“This platform can be attractive for portable systems that measure a sample and provide information to the user without connecting to a power source,” said Esquivel.

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Esquivel studied mechatronics engineering at the Technological Institute of Monterrey and continued his training in micro- and nano-electronics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where he specialized in the design and development of miniature power sources, such as mico fuel cells using microfluidics that might be integrated into chips.

Specifically, using microfluidic platforms makes it possible to perform laboratory tests using a network of canals and chambers which, thanks to their small dimensions, saves on reagents and requires a smaller sample. However, as Esquivel explained in a cover article published in the scientific journal Lab on a Chip this January, many of these platforms require pumps, power supplies and electronic controls for a full analysis of the samples– all elements that increase the complexity of the device and limit its portability.

To overcome this drawback, Esquivel has proposed the integration of a micro fuel cell in the microfluidic platform to power the chip and that uses the CO2 generated from an electrochemical reaction—a gas generally considered a waste– to pump liquids being analyzed through the microscopic channels. “It’s like having a battery and a hydraulic pump in one device, which means a more efficient energy usage and a more compact form,” said Esquivel.

According to Montserrat Calleja, researcher with the Department of Devices, Sensors and Biosensors Microelectronics Institute of Madrid, this solution is “very clever” and Equivel’s career is “remarkable.” “Given his youth, his career is expected to lead to many future achievements,” she said.

In addition to this latest development, Esquivel’s work within the Micro Fuel Cells groups at IMB-CSIC and collaborations with the Helmholtz Centre in Berlin and CITEDEQ in Mexico-where alternative materials to silicon are used to cut costs and reduce the size of these devices, has resulted in several patents and publications in highly respected journals.

This year, Esquivel has completed a course in business administration called ‘From University to Business’ at UAB for the purpose of founding a company to convert his experimental results into commercial products. “It’s this challenge that will make my career in the coming years,” he said.

In particular, his intention is to develop a flexible and customizable universal platform, whose potential applications include, among others, the analysis of biological fluids for infections, deficiencies and pathologies. “We don’t want to compete with other groups with more sophisticated detection-system solutions, but rather offer the opportunity to integrate these methods into an efficient platform that is easy to use and can really enter the market,” said Esquivel.

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the eighth in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Jorge Soto

How can citizens use technology to change society? This is the question that Jorge Soto, an electronics engineer from the Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico has been asking since 2009 when he created his first open data project for citizen participation: Cuidemoselvoto.org.

Thanks to this election-monitoring tool, citizens and nongovernmental organizations could be informed about electoral fraud through Twitter, text messages and emails during a given year’s elections. “We received nearly 11,000 reports and 200 of them proceeded to court,” said Soto, in who also studied business administration at Columbia Business School.

Cuidemoselvoto.org was followed by Internetnecesario.org, which was created by Soto and other colleagues following an additional 3% Internet-usage tax proposed by the Mexican government in late 2009. “There was a lot of criticism and so we launched the site to channel this by monitoring the actions it caused,” he said. Among other things, the system turned Twitter activity into an email for members of Congress. As a result, part of the Internetnecesario.org creative team was invited to present its position during discussion of the tax in the Senate.

Not content with this, Soto launched the company Citivox in 2010. Although he has continued to promote new initiatives, today this is his flagship project. The goal, according to Soto, is “to help citizens, civil society organizations and governments and institutions to work together to improve their communities.”

According to the engineer, the idea behind Citivox is that “Governments today, to have more power, don’t need more control, more weapons or control over the press, but rather greater legitimacy.” For citizens, Soto explains, Citivox is a technological tool with which they can “identify and share information about community problems,” while for leaders it is a service and technology platform to “understand, manage and analyze these reports and meet real needs.”

The system’s model rests on four pillars. The first is the report or complaints from citizens through mobile technology. The second is the government’s management, which starts and allocates resources. The result of this, through maps, graphs and statistics that are generated, enables measurement. Finally, there is communication and publication of data for tracking complaints.

All this is made possible by software based on a mobile platform that brings together individual stories and analyzes real-time information in order to identify patterns, trends and correlations. So Citivox “actually reflects what is and is not a structural problem,” said Soto. “Every citizen becomes a sensor and governments and institutions are able to evolve while making informed decisions in real-time, managing their resources better,” he added. This is empowering, as “both citizens and governments” can carry out their work in a “more effective and efficient manner.”

Soto notes that “being a simple and easy to use technology, it’s highly scalable and replicable.” Not surprisingly, the team already has Citivox projects in six countries. “It’s a great opportunity to rejuvenate governments and institutions by using networks rather than hierarchies,” he said.

According to Carlos Viniegra, director of the Digital Government Unit at the Ministry of Public Administration in Mexico City and a member of TR35 Mexico awards jury, the impact that Citivox’s activities have generated are already very visible in the Mexican environment and even internationally. In addition, their business “relates to new type of organization that beneficially integrates social, environmental and business” and “certainly is a good example of an innovative advance in technology to build a type of relationship with society and also one that builds new organizations for the country, “concluded Viniegra.

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Jordi Muñoz

A 21-year old Mexican immigrant faces another day of tedious confinement in his apartment in Riverside, California, waiting to get his green card that would allow him to study, seek work or take out a driver’s license in the US.

Flashback to March 2007 and Jordi Muñoz, a passionate computer man dreaming of becoming a pilot, has just moved with his wife across the border while leaving his engineering studies hanging at the Center for Higher Technical Education of Baja California. “I was mega-bored at home so I started playing with chips and controllers, spent hours experimenting with Arduino (an open source electronic platform) code, browsing and reading on the computer,” said Muñoz.

Thus Muñoz discovered DIY Drones, a forum where thousands of hobbyists who build their own unmanned aerial vehicles share their experiences, code libraries that they develop and adapted to and plans for electronic components with other like-minded individuals.

Immersed in this sea of knowledge, Muñoz not only improved as a developer but he also  inherited the open and collaborative philosophy upon which he has based his career as an entrepreneur and made important contacts. His home experiments attracted the attention of Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s editor, who saw Muñoz’s video of an autonomous helicopter flying using Arduino and a repurposed Wii controller.

Impressed, Anderson gave Muñoz a small amount of funding to manually produce 40 control boards. “They sold the same day and then we realized that here was a business,” explained Muñoz. Lo and behold, 3D Robotics, a company that employs 20 people and according to his estimates, was born. The company expects to generate $4.8 million profit by the end of the year.

This company, of which Muñoz is executive director, sells electronic accessories to hobbyists who build drones in their garage and university professors who want their students to learn engineering via robot design. The most popular product is ArduPilot system, a low-cost and easy to use autopilot. “For less than $200, builders are offered a high-tech system that would cost thousands,” says Muñoz. “Also, as its open source, they can ‘play’ with it and see real-time changes to their modifications.”

Along with teaching applications, these drones (or parts thereof) have proven useful for many other purposes. Using a small drone instead of chartering a helicopter saves a lot of money during surveillance missions, the monitoring of migratory animals or the inspection of archaeological sites.

In 2011, Munoz asked his friend William Romero to found a sister company to 3D Robotics based in Tijuana called Udrones. It is meant to serve the international market and has sent orders to customers requesting fully-assembled and ready-to-fly aircraft to places such as Germany and Australia. Although the manufacturing is done in Mexico with US technological development, the goal is to generate a technical training incubator for Mexican professionals whose skills Muñoz believes will soon be comparable to American engineers. “If the nature of my business was not open-source, I would just open an assembly line in Mexico and the workers would simply put together parts; there would not be a transfer of knowledge,” he explained.

For John Janas, president of the company Janas International Enterprises and TR35 Mexico awards judge, Muñoz’s key value lies precisely “in promoting the ideology of open source and Creative Commons researchers, students and others” who a share the details of their hardware and software. “This sharing of knowledge accelerates the development of innovative technology applications for aerial robots.”

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the sixth in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Javier Gómez

Each year in Mexico, heart disease ends the lives of nearly 60,000 people, two thirds of whom are over 65, making it the second leading cause of death in that country. However, this number could be reduced if health care centers had a better team for prevention and for monitoring patients with heart problems. But ECGs, devices that record the electrical currents emitted by the heart muscle, are still too expensive, difficult to maintain and operate.

“Only medical institutions or people with enough money can buy them,” says Javier Gomez, 25-year-old electrical engineer from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México who just introduced a new electrocardiograph in partnership with an innovative mobile wireless alert system.

This development exemplifies his effort to create a technology to improve patient monitoring and remove the price barrier when it comes to purchasing medical equipment. The prototype was presented this March at the International Meeting for Research in Electrical Engineering, held in Mexico, and has generated great expectations for the potential benefits — not only in hospitals but also in private homes.

“The development of a biomedical device like this is very commendable,” said Carlos Viniegra, secretary of the Civil Service Digital Government Unit of the Government of Mexico and judge of the TR35 Mexico awards. In his opinion, for countries like this “it is very important that these initiatives achieve success by opening new markets at the base of the pyramid.”

To construct the cardiograph, Gomez has used electronic components readily available in the market and are thus low-cost.  This lowers the final price and simplifies maintenance. “The fact that the parts are cheap does not sacrifice its good performance,” Gomez said.

The device can also be moved out of the hospital as it runs on rechargeable batteries. Additionally, its readings can be acquired via an application that can be run from any computer.

The other major attraction of Gomez’s technology is that it greatly increases doctors’ freedom of movement while keeping them informed of changes in the status of their patients. Conventional devices lack a real warning system: they are limited to a beep when the heart rate is out of its set parameters, forcing the staff to care for a patient and remain with him.

However, with the system developed by Gomez, a doctor may take a receiver that picks up infrared wireless signals emitted by the electrocardiograph and alerts with three types of indicators (light, text and sound) of how a patient is doing, without being physically in the room. The range of this system is now 30 meters, but Gomez is working on implementing a radio method to increase the range to 200.

Thanks to the initiative of this young man, fighting to improve the quality of life of patients in poor or rural areas and for those who cannot move from their homes has gained a powerful ally.

“It will be interesting to see if the development gains momentum once the product has reached implementation,” Viniegra said.

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Javier Aguera

At this stage, it should be clear to all of us that the People’s Republic of China is the de facto factory supplying the material needs of our 21^st century technological society. But how long will this first-class world power be willing to remain as an industrial power before jumping to the final consumer market? In the following lines I will try to shed some light onto these issues and take a glimpse at the near future.

“It’s all over the place,” said Hagen Fendler, the chief design director for handsets at Chinese telco equipment supplier Huawei. “The European creation culture in food is less is more. Here (in China) it’s more is more.” And it truly is, but this feature of China’s ancient culture is valid not only for food, but for all of the elements that conform their daily activities.

The aspirational and measuredly ambitious conscience that is present in the core of the Chinese way of thinking has driven them to assume big challenges and succeed in most of the imaginable fields out there. This combined with a disciplined -yet sometimes in the outliers of honesty- sense of duty and a hardworking spirit has taken the Chinese industries to put their foreign counterparts in an embarrassing situation. Clothing producers see their output dramatically decreased in favor of the benefits of low-cost labor in mainland China, and Spanish convenience stores are being acquired or forced to close by Chinese businessmen that have earned a reputation for having longer opening hours and provide what the client demands (no more, no less). Even the renewables sector is going through bad times, as Chinese solar panel producers are able to supply high-quality products at a fraction of the price.

It’s even worse if we take a look on the mobile communications industry. Mobile telephony was a pure European/American high-tech industry. Research and development was led by western companies and even production of Japanese mobile phone brands like Mitsubishi-Trium were made in France. This was less than eight years ago. Sadly, now it’s unthinkable to propose this. Investment for top-notch manufacturing facilities is rarely made outside China, know-how is kept by Chinese engineers and even the component supply chain is constrained to that geographical area. China produces 97% of the world’s rare-earth based compounds, which are at the very core of the key components that are present in almost any piece of technology we can think of.

So it’s fair to assume that the industrial battle is lost in their favor, at least for the foreseeable future.

But Chinese government-led companies do not seem to aspire to be just the manufacturer behind the beloved brands on the other side of their borders. Apple’s products have just become available to the Chinese population, and the “brand feeling” is growing fast in their internal markets. This is why some of the consumer electronic producers have been trying to leverage a common effort for creating distinctive brands that let them interact with the end customer. This not only means public recognition, but also access to a more profitable segment of the value chain… especially when you already own the segments below it.

But will these companies be able to enter the demanding western market with strong brands, and lose the current “Made in China” label’s negative valuation? Will a low-cost approach be enough for satisfying a public who is used to going beyond prices and demand good quality with a reliable aftersales support service?

Some have done it before (Taiwan-based HTC is a perfect example of a well-managed transformation) but some others like ZTE are struggling in the process. Huawei, who already provides 75% of the world’s 3G/4G net infrastructure, has announced their plans to become one of the five top smartphone brands in the US market. Will they eventually be able to cross the chasm and become an iconic brand? It’s difficult to predict, but bet they will try with all their might. After all, we –the customers-, are the sole ones responsible for choosing between products and brands. But remember: sometimes it’s not only a matter of price.

Javier Agüera is the co-founder of GeeksPhone, a Spanish company founded in 2009 that was the first European brand to launch a smartphone based on Google’s Android operating system: the GeeksPhone One. Javier is passionate about mobile technology and is a firm believer in disruptive technologies. He is also a winner of Spain’s first TR35 competition for his work in the mobile industry.

Rodrigo Martínez

In a globalized economic crisis where companies are minimizing the costs of recruitment, a system to facilitate and lessen the price of this task is crucial to encourage those considering hiring new employees. However, good recruitment is crucial to a company and it cannot be trusted to anyone who simply promises fast service and cut-rate fares.

Rodrigo Martinez, who has a Master’s in IT and Business from University College London, knows how important it is to be effective and efficient when searching for the most suitable candidate. So, against the current trend of hiring, which is closer to a transaction number than a valuable exchange, this 29 year old committed himself to making the process more human again.

His main weapon for that, paradoxical as it sounds in an attempt to return to tradition, is technology. His efforts led him to found Wowzer two years ago, which offers a recruitment service that combines software and hardware with a visual and emotional design to discover and foster relationships between candidates and organizations.

Wowzer, based in Guadalajara, Mexico and Sunnyvale , CA leverages the new “2.0” world and social media, where visual is as important as verbal and written communication. A unique video application allows the contracting company to display its corporate culture to potential candidates, who in turn can transmit their best attributes to the company through a brief video. Thus, it ensures a more reliable way for candidates to eventually be invited to a personal interview without wasting time on non-matches.

This innovative recruitment process goes beyond the standard resume and exceeds the current geographical limitations while reducing the time taken to complete the process as much as 80%, according to Martinez.

“I will not stop until Wowzer becomes the new standard for worldwide procurement,” said Martinez, replacing what he considers its only competitor: the telephone interview.

To make this happen, Martinez has raised more than $2.5 million from some of the main investors in Silicon Valley, such as Doll Capital Management and Kapor Capital. This success is followed by a list of many important customers. Companies like Intel, BMW, Manpower, Deloitte, Walmart and Adidas have not hesitated to use the service despite Wowzer and the founder’s youth, who is also one of the first members of the Mexico’s Red Sandbox, a private community whose members are “atypical” young innovators under 30 who run their own businesses and take leadership roles, among other qualities.

Martinez’s entrepreneurial nature has always focused on having a global impact: before founding Wowzer, he spent his career studying and working abroad in the UK, the Czech Republic and India. He has worked at companies such as Monster.com, a global Internet recruitment and job search giant.

This experience has served as a base to see first-hand the overall impact of recruitment, as noted by John Janas, of Janas International Enterprises and member of jury for theTR35 Mexico awards. According to Janas, the young Mexican “has developed an innovative web application that dramatically improves the detection and filtering of information from the candidates before the final interviews,” he said. “The global recruitment market is very competitive and crowded and Wowzer provides an efficient process that eliminates unnecessary redundancy.”

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

Javier Lozano

Diabetes is the leading cause of death in Mexico. The lack of medical care and management caused 70,000 deaths in 2007 and the figure continues to rise. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts that 2015 –in its most optimistic scenario– could see the disease taking more than one and a half million lives worldwide, a quarter of them in the Americas.

In June 2010, Javier Lozano, a young physical engineer by profession from the Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, had just finished his Master’s in business administration from the Sloan Business School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which added to his extensive prior experience in innovation in the field of new business management tools.

After observing how diabetes seriously compromised the quality of life in Mexico, especially in communities where the population has no access to proper diagnosis and treatment, Lozano decided to return to his home country to try to provide a solution. His goal was to create a number of centers specializing in the disease, to seek and attract patients and utilize new technologies and data analysis software to improve focus much more affordably.

For over 10 years, Lozano has been dedicated to promoting educational and agricultural management in indigenous communities in Mexico and worked for several private companies which demonstrated his leadership in the areas of efficiency and resource optimization.

“I wanted to transform the way of delivering medical services for chronic, degenerative diseases throughout Mexico and Latin America,” explained the young entrepreneur. But even as these companies generated savings of over $ 40 million through various technological innovations, Lozano was convinced that the real challenge was to put technology at the service of the under-privileged.

His idea was realized with the founding in December 2010 of Clínicas del Azúcar, a management model of comprehensive care clinics that specialize in low cost monitoring to eliminate the complications of diabetes. If not properly controlled this disease can lead to amputations, kidney failure and blindness, which has an especially severe impact on those living in rural and isolated communities. “Over 90% of patients cannot currently afford quality care,” notes Lozano.

His company offers packages that include all the specialist consultations, diagnostic and laboratory support equipment needed by a diabetic for a year. “Through innovation in how we provide medical care, we lowered the price from $1,000 to about $200,” said Lozano.

Some examples of innovation in Clínicas del Azúcar are automated tests to diagnose eye problems, predictive nutrition software to meet the tastes and needs of the patient and the development of algorithms that try to anticipate if patients are in control of the situation.

“Our algorithms help to make decisions before the patient reaches the doctor, so you empower him and the nurse to act in time in case there are any complications,” said Lozano.

The first Clínica del Azúcar, which employs 10 people, has been operating since November 2011 and more than 250 people have contracted its services. “We want to establish agreements with the government and civil organizations to expand,” says Lozano. “Within five years we want to have around 50 centers in Mexico and Latin America.”

According to Robert Nicol, director of sequencing and technology development operations at MIT’s and Harvard Broad Institute and TR35 Mexico awards, the work has ” great impact and importance” in addressing a significant health problem in undeveloped areas. “The use of technology to lower costs and packages to gain efficiencies of scale is very innovative,” he says.

This article originally appeared in Spanish at technologyreview.es

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of profiles featuring the winners of Mexico’s first TR35 Awards. The awards are given to the top ten innovators and entrepreneurs under the age of 35 as chosen by a panel of judges. For more information on TR35 Mexico, click here.

The 2049ers CREDIT: NASA

Mining is one of the oldest professions and forms a large part of our history. Neanderthals used flint for their tools, which is not surprising when you consider that the world’s oldest mines date back 43,000 years. Since then, man has not stopped using mineral resources which in turn has developed into a powerful industry. However, despite its incalculable benefits, not everything is great where mining is concerned. These days, where ecology has become more important than ever, a major concern is the environmental impact that mining has on the Earth, in particular the pollution of aquifers, removing vegetation and soils and the profound change in the topography of mining areas.

In this context, it is possible that a US company has found a solution to these problems. Planetary Resources, a company created in November 2010 under the name of Arkyd Astronautics, intends to develop technologies for mining asteroids. Its website explains that “they are setting a new paradigm in the discovery and use of resources that will make the social system within the sphere of influence of mankind.” Many powerful people such as filmmaker James Cameron, the co-founder and current president of Google Larry Page and his predecessor in the company, Eric Schmidt, count among participants. The company defines itself, without hyperbole, as “visionaries, pioneers, rocket scientists and industry leaders with extensive experience in and out of this planet.” That’s a tall order.

But what is there in all this? Khalid Al-Ali, executive director for the office of NASA Partnerships, is in favor of such initiatives. “I am generally supportive of pioneering efforts in space for the benefit of the earth and its inhabitants.  Efforts benefitting all need to happen, so that they are cost-effective in the future,” he said.

One of the biggest advantages of Planetary Resources’ plans, in his opinion, is that it will provide better access to highly valued materials such as water, gold, platinum and rare earths.  In addition, it will allow significant development of technology, which may be used for other purposes. This development would revive the demand-supply curve of precious materials, ie, having more resources available. A direct consequence would be the decline in prices of these materials (platinum, for example). Above all, it would make long-term space travel easier.

However, from the point of view of Al-Ali, there are some points that that haven’t been hashed out yet. Specifically, it is not clear when these resources will become available, it is unclear how they will sterilize extraterrestrial materials (in the off chance of native microbes) and it is possible that an asteroid’s orbit could be perturbed to a point where it would pose a threat to Earth. Given these difficulties, the question arises — and Dr. Al-Ali agrees—is it time to go find these materials or can we reuse or recycle those that we already have on Earth?

Meanwhile, Zac Manchester, an aerospace engineering student at Cornell University and creator of the ‘Sprite’, a type of chip-sized satellite, thinks that “there are many new technologies that will have to be developed to make asteroid mining a reality. First,” he said, “operating a spacecraft in close proximity to anything is difficult, and an asteroid with an uncertain gravitational field is especially difficult.” In his opinion, to carry out the plans that Planetary Resources has published, they need very small spacecraft equipped with telescopes to search for asteroids. “Tiny, cheap, expendable spacecraft like the Sprite could be used for close inspection of prospective asteroid targets with much less risk and cost than a larger spacecraft. They could, for example, impact the surface carrying detectors for certain desired materials, and could then transmit results to a mothership waiting a safe distance away,” explained Manchester.

Given these ideas, one must ask whether it is necessary to go so far and use space mining to solve the environmental impact of traditional mining that occurs on Earth.